Floating population, pilgrimage spots causing Covid surge in Andhra Pradesh's Chittoor district

As many as 57 students of Dharmagiri Veda Vignana Peetham, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam-run vedic school at Tirumala have tested positive after the institution reopened a few days back.

All the 435 students, learning vedas and other Hindu rituals and recitals, had rejoined the institution after submitting negative reports of the Covid-19 RTPCR tests taken in their hometowns last week.

"When the rapid antigen tests were conducted on campus for all the students on Tuesday, 57 were found to be positive. They are all asymptomatic but were shifted to the Sri Venkateshwara Institute of Medical Sciences in Tirupati for better treatment,” a TTD official told DH.

“None of these students have shown any Covid-19 symptoms so far and everyone is healthy. We took their samples for RTPCR tests, reports of which are awaited,” the officials said.

In view of the large number of positive cases noticed on the campus, the remaining 378 pupils and 10 faculty of Dharmagiri Vedapathashala were tested again. TTD authorities said that they have tested negative.

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Floating population, pilgrims

Meanwhile, Chittoor district, neighboring Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, with several famous pilgrimage centres like Tirupati, Srikalahasti, Kanipakkam is topping the Covid-19 case chart in Andhra Pradesh for the last few weeks.

Out of the 136 new cases reported in the state on Sunday, 49 are from Chittoor alone. Positive cases in this border district are hovering between 30 to 40 for the past few days, while the daily fresh cases are in single digits in over half of the 13 districts of Andhra Pradesh.

“The challenge for us is the floating population. There are about 100 villages along the Karnataka border and another 100 villages on the Tamil Nadu border. And we have a large number of pilgrims now visiting Tirupati etc temples. About half of our daily cases would be from Tirupati,” Dr M Penchalaiah, Chittoor district medical and health officer, told DH.

With the temple officials no longer ensuring the constant public announcement to caution the devotees, pilgrims, especially at Srikalahasti, could be seen crowding the queue lines with many of them without masks.

“The Covid-19 fear and mask-social distancing discipline, it appears, is gone now. We will ask the temple authorities to see that the pilgrims follow the Covid-19 guidelines,” the officer said.

The Tirumala Tirupati temple board is letting over 50,000 footfalls into the Lord Venkateshwara temple every day now, up from the 6000 pilgrims allowed when the temple reopened in June.

The celebrated shrine was closed for about three months last summer due to the rise in Covid-19 cases across the country. The Tirumala temple used to attract about 75,000 pilgrims daily before the pandemic.